Yet another ‘dark’ Easter for Malawians

For the umpteenth time, Malawians will endure an Easter weekend of unreliable power supply as the Electricity Generation Company (Egenco) has taken 39.1 megawatts (MW) of power from the grid to facilitate maintenance. In a statement yesterday, Egenco said the maintenance works at Tedzani II and IV hydro power stations in Blantyre started at 8pm yesterday and expected to be finalised at 6pm on Monday. “These works are essential for ensuring the sustainability, reliability, and optimal performance of the generation units,” reads the statement.

Egenco will remain with about 341MW for Escom to feed into the national grid during the period. The works include preventive maintenance on Tedzani units, repair of drainage systems and modernisation of spillway gate controls. Egenco said it will maximise generation from other hydro power stations, including Tedzani I and III, Nkula A and B, Kapichira and Wovwe as well as from available diesel power plants to cushion the impact.

Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) chief public relations and communications officer Pilirani Phiri in an interview yesterday said the utility expects total available supply to average about 383.18MW during the day and 332.6MW at night against a projected peak demand of 400.2MW. “The evening peak results in a power supply shortfall of about 67.6MW which necessitates the implementation of load shedding to maintain grid stability and ensure fair distribution of electricity across the country,” he said. Phiri further said power loadshedding is expected to occur mainly between 5am and 9.30am and from 4pm to 9pm daily.

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But he assured that for residential or domestic customers the impact would be less severe as some large industrial and commercial customers are expected to scale down operations, easing overall electricity demand. Malawi has been experiencing daily load shedding averaging between 4.5 and five hours since last year due persistent power constraints. Egenco has a total installed generation capacity of 444.67MW, with 390.15MW from hydro power plants, 53.22MW from thermal power plants and 1.3MW from solar power plants.

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